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Blogtalk: Obama and Detainee Photos

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Blogtalk: Obama and Detainee Photos

May 14, 2009 2:49 pmMay 14, 2009 2:49 pm

How will this play out in the long-term view?

President Obama’s announcement on Wednesday that he would fight against the release of photographs of abused prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, not surprisingly, had liberal bloggers and writers seething — not just the left-left base, but also those invested in what Mr. Obama promised would be far more transparency in government than the previous administration allowed.

First off, the legal avenues seem particularly closed to having an appeal of the matter heard at the highest court in the land, given the reluctance of the full panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan to consider another round in the case. Despite whatever new arguments — or fuller arguments — the Obama legal team might try, getting the Supreme Court’s ear after such a resounding lower-level shutdown may be Herculean.

In the political sense, perhaps that’s what Mr. Obama and the Pentagon need to say, that they tried their utmost to obtain the ultimate judgment but could not get another hearing on the issue.

In the blogosphere and on editorial pages, the president’s decision has echoed far and wide.

More conservative commentators, including some of the more strident critics of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, saw the decision as a sign that the president was growing into the Oval Office.

At The Atlantic.com, Andrew Sullivan –- a strong supporter of Mr. Obama last year and a fervent opponent of the methods used against detainees –- wrote on Wednesday night that he could understand how the photos could “inflame the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

But Mr. Sullivan also asserted that “for Obama to act as an extension of the Bush era of secrecy is potentially more damaging to the United States and its interests and service members.”

“You cannot show weakness in the face of this shamelessness,” Mr. Sullivan continued. “Maybe it’s a long game and accountability is a dish best served cold and late. But what if there’s always a reason, in an endless war of occupation of multiple countries, not to serve it at all?”

Quoting Mr. Obama’s Wednesday statement, Mr. Ackerman wrote on Thursday morning: “If the photos are ‘not particularly sensational,’ then they wouldn’t, as Obama went on to say, ‘further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.’ How can unsensational photographs put troops in danger?”

And at Salon, Glenn Greenwald commented on Wednesday that Mr. Obama’s statement about whipping up anti-American fervor could be extended to mean that “we should conceal or even outright lie about all the bad things we do that might reflect poorly on us.” But even more broadly, Mr. Greenwald contended that this was the latest in a string of unsettling decisions the president has made.

“Apparently, the proper reaction to heinous acts by our political leaders is not to hold them accountable but, instead, to hide evidence of what they did,” Mr. Greenwald wrote. “That’s the warped mentality Obama is endorsing today, and has been endorsing since Jan. 20.”

Meanwhile, conservatives -– including those who worked for George W. Bush or the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain -– applauded the president’s decision.

In a post entitled “Obama Keeps Growing in Office,” Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard, a spokesman for last year’s McCain campaign, declared on Wednesday that the only rationale for releasing the photos “would have been to soothe the consciences of American liberals who suspect American troops to be war criminals and desperately want the pictures to prove it.”

“There are elements on the left that would expose the president to political danger, and the troops to mortal danger, only to see the last administration implicated in any kind of abuse,” Mr. Goldfarb continued. “The president should be praised for resisting those elements, even as his actions also serve his own self-interest.”

At National Review Online, Peter Wehner, who ran the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives under Mr. Bush, called Mr. Obama’s decision a “blindingly obvious thing,” adding he believes the president should wear any criticism he receives from liberals “as a badge of honor.”

“Whether on the matter of detainees at Guantánamo Bay or the war in Iraq or the release of these photographs,” Mr. Wehner wrote on Wednesday, “Obama is finding out — as does every Oval Office occupant — that the duties of being president are not simple as campaign slogans.”

But, in the minds of some on the right, the president did not go far enough.

Andrew C. McCarthy, a former United States attorney who helped prosecute Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and others involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, criticized the president for “still trying to get away with voting present” on Thursday morning

“It is in Obama’s power, right this minute, to end this debacle by issuing an executive order suppressing disclosure of the photos due to national security and foreign policy concerns,” Mr. McCarthy maintained, also at National Review Online.

But others still wonder whether Mr. Obama hasn’t made a decision — by promulgating arguments in court for additional secrecy — that merely extends Bush policies, which were also promoted by Senators Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Joseph Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, as well as Vice President Cheney.

At the leftist DailyKos, McJoan asked “why President Obama is allowing the likes of Graham, Lieberman, and the Cheneys to set the terms of the debate on torture?”

Editorialists have begun weighing in. The Wall Street Journal applauded: “President Obama yesterday put American soldiers and national security ahead of political braying from his campaign allies on the left. What a pleasant reversal.” The Los Angeles Times took the opposing view, with the headline “Release the Torture Photos.”

President Obama spoke to “tens of thousands of students and relatives” at the Arizona State University commencent, we’re told. Please don’t forget the faculty, who were kept waiting in the heat up to five hours before the ceremony started, and who were the only group (aside from the platform party) who stayed until the end. The faculty doesn’t deserve to be ignored, especially given their contrast with Imost of the undergraduates who, in a stunning display of boorishness, headed for the exits the moment Obama finished his talk.

Usually I fall way to the left of the norm of public opinion, but I have to agree with Obama on this issue. Not only would the photos serve as ammo for militants bent on America’s destruction, I also fail to see what anyone has to gain by seeing them.

It strikes me rather like an episode of Jerry Springer, in which people tune in to see the embarassing and seedy under belly of the human psyche bared for the world to see. Have no doubt, I believe the US military has done some atrocious and inhumane things in the name of freedom during the time of wars dating back to before the birth of our nation. Still, I hope that one day in the not-so-distant future those photographs will be entered into the public record.

it’s almost funny – Obama has turned into a remake of Bush Sr. it seems! The uber-left must be feeling well and truly duped.

I never understood how they could believe that Obama was going to be ‘different’ – his previous political career (what there was of it really) was about Obama doing what he needed to do politically to get ahead. So how on earth did they all buy into that “Change” propoganda. Well, goes to show, with the right marketing campaign you can sell ice to the Eskimo’s!!

I think the President has a card or two up his sleeve and is taking his time — his tendency on sensitive matters — so that he can mollify his military commanders and troops while Cheney & Co. twists in the wind as more damaging documentation trickles out in reference to the VP’s Office being the main advocate, enabler, and manager of torture.

And as of now we’ve got highly placed operatives, including Republicans who are getting fed up with Cheney spinning a web of garbage. These folks are fingering Cheney as the man desperately torturing his way to a (non-existent) link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. They’re testifying that torture didn’t work. They’re advising Cheney to wise up and shut up.

So rest assured, my friends, those pictures will be released in due time and the chips will fall where they may…then the courts of law and public opinion will be thrown wide open.

Lost in the smokescreen is the fact that these photographs were probably taken long after the probably similar Abu Ghraib photographs, indicating that the investigation and whitewash of Abu Ghraib had precisely zero effect on the government’s management of special prisons afterwards.

This is a matter resolved in the voting booth. Nothing else has the power to exact real and true change. Next time, American voters, you see any politician who even has the slightest resembelance to the two jokers who ran this country for eight years, please, please think more than twice about putting them in power.

In November, 2010 tell the likes of Cheney, Limbaugh, Hannity we do not approve of their style. We the American voters can send them into political oblivion forever.

Whenever I see people at both far ends of the political spectrum furious at the president, I feel pleased and relieved that we have someone squarely in the sensible center in the White House. The president took a position, concluded that he was wrong on the basis of evidence or arguments, and was unafraid to reverse himself. America would be far better off today if the previous president had been so sensible.

Pretty amazing logic being promoted here…. A person who denounces torturer and moves to stop further such action but refuses to release the photos….. somehow makes him just as bad as the person who setup unlawful toucher programs. I am torn by this decision but I can certainly understand Obama’s action.

Which would you rather have….picture of torture released or Health Care reform this year?? Ill take the latter.

My first metro newspaper reporting job was for Scripps-Howard in Memphis. The Scripps motto was and maybe still is, “Give light and people will find their own way.” As a journalist I try to live by those words still. Obama’s censoring those photos is lessening the “light” people need in a healthy democracy.
Sterling Greenwood/Aspen Free Press

I absolutely feel that Obama did the right thing. What positive can come of this? People are human, and some are just mean. If the photos are released it will give way too many people more ammo to use against us. I think he has made his point with the memos. Why add fuel to the fire? Are they going to black out the soldiers in the pictures? If not, people may retaliate. You never know what may happen, but I don’t see any good coming from it.

The disgrace this country is going through, is created by Men and Generals look all the same “Large White Men” controlling the strongest army the world ever witness and Billions of tax payer money to manage, they are so full of pride and for what! ..

A war against the wrong target, a week third world country that was already surrounded and traumatized by the U.S military then, and has nothing to do with Ben Laden, destroy it, killing and displacing millions of innocent human being for no reason.

Allowing torture in the name of America, that reveals the savage nature conduct of Bush, Cheney and their other thugs like them, toward humanity.

Bombing small villages in remote area in Afghanistan killing poor innocent people mostly helpless women and children,

This is what our Generals Men are so buoyant about, it is really the ultimate of a sick behavior, and they are ruling this country, that I am so ashamed of.

I support President Obama’s decision. I believe most intelligent people do support him on this.

This is no flip-flop. There is certainly nothing to gain politically by taking this position. If anything, he’s taking a lot of heat for making a decision in the best interest of the safety of our military and all U.S. citizens.

It’s all part of the clean-up of the Bush/Cheney mess. I don’t see how anyone could interpret this as anything but a rational decision. Releasing more photos – haven’t we seen enough? – just extends the evil reach of Bush/Cheney to poison the country and the world.

When the torture memos were released, it put to rest the claims that the interrogation techniques were legal. They weren’t and you didn’t need a law degree to appreciate the convoluted logic of the memos. Once the documents were made public, President Obama said that is not how the US does business.

Cheney is calling for the release of a memo that states the utility of torture. We should note that he is not calling for the release of the many memos contradicting that position.

Now we have more photos to document Rumsfeld’s outsourced war on the cheap. We’ve seen a sample. We won’t gain anything by seeing more of the same.

We have Gitmo, another misbegotten Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld legacy. It has to be dealt with. It needs to close. Like everything else the previous administration put its hand to, it was poorly conceived, badly managed and left as unfinished business.

Mr. Bush turns out to be the proverbial tenant from hell: He took up residence for eight years and eventually left the place in a shambles: everything is broken, destroyed, lost or stolen. The place is barely habitable and we, the property owners, are to blame for renting without doing a thorough background check and then idiotically renewing the lease in 2004.

Why is the president continuing to pretend that this is a judicial call, concerning which he is just a bystander?

Apparently, the “delay” is to be accomplished by having the Justice Department do what it patently should have done two months ago: appeal the Second Circuit’s disclosure ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s all well and good, but to prevent the photos from being used by our enemies, Obama doesn’t need to rely on that iffy route. He has it within his power, and has had it within his power at all times since January 20, to issue an executive order determining that the release of the photos would harm U.S. national security and contravene U.S. foreign-policy objectives.

The New York Times reports that other legal experts agree that an executive order is the easiest route to block the release of these photos. Well, at least that’s the easiest legal option, perhaps not the easiest political one, as McCarthy writes:

Could it be that [Obama] wants to be able to vote “present”? Is it that, no matter how this comes out, he wants to be able to tell both the antiwar Left and Americans concerned about national security that he tried to look out for them but, alas, it was the court’s call? I suspect that’s the case, and, if I’m right, that’s foolish on Obama’s part. Presidents don’t get to hide that way. This is his call. He should make it.

The entire scope of this dilemma, this problem, this issue is being looked at from too limited a viewpoint.

Obama’s tragic error is that he is now fighting piecemeal battles over questions of torture, war escalation, domestic economic tyranny of banks and credit cards and mortgage reform, and health care, and dozens of other ‘single issue’ fights because he did not have the guts initially to take on the seminal issue of the EMPIRE that is the ultimate cause of all our separate “sorrows of empire”.

The ‘Hamlet error’ of Obama on this world stage is that he should have more carefully thought-out his campaign position on the ruling-elite ‘global corporate financial’ EMPIRE which controls our government by hiding behind the facade of its two-party “Vichy’ sham of democracy (and its equally ‘Vichy’ corporatist media).

Should this ‘Empire problem/cancer’, which is the signal, singular, and seminal cause of all our “Sorrows of Empire”, both foreign and domestic as Hannah Arendt warned, have been candidly shared with Americans prior to election to the highest office in our land?

Or should a presidential candidate maintain ‘ambiguity’ for the sake of electability (like Obama did) and then face the personal dilemma of whether “to be or not to be” more candid about confronting Empire (and the inevitable torture, and looting, and war, and deceit, and tyranny that Empire always brings) after he’s in office —- and thus risk sliding down the slippery slope for “not rocking the boat” once in power, but “going along to get along” as the Democratic Party has since FDR and JFK?

Obama needed to “Let Justice Be Done, Though the Heavens Fall” regarding the underlying Empire cancer — and instead he is now falling under the wheels of an Empire that he never even dared to whisper of, let alone confront.

Do we really need more photos than we’ve already seen or any more paper work to know the atrocities exacted on men and women, many of whom have not been charged with a crime and have no access to a lawyer, are heinous?

If you need a bunch of pictures to prove that the Bush administration violated the US Constitution, then you are sorely under-informed.

So, we’re simply not going to see more photographs showing that the practices photographed at Abu Ghraib continued after the whitewash of that episode as if whitewashing the later epiodes will somehow have a different effect on the future.

Obama is walking a fine line. The arguement Obama used to not release these photos is not very different from the arguements right wingers have used to go after the TImes for exposing Bush Adminstration crimes from torture to wiretapping to secret CIA Prisons. It, according to the conservatives, endagers American lives.

The NYTimes is behind the curve on this one. If you want to get up to speed, I refer you to reporting by Marcy Wheeler and Greg Sargent. And Cheney was called on the carpet in no uncertain terms by fellow Republican Col. Lawrence Wilkerson in an article in today’s ‘Washington Notes.’